Books: The Biggest Arena

CIRCLES: A WASHINGTON STORY
by ABIGAIL MCCARTHY
251 pages. Doubleday.$7.95.

There was Joseph and Mary and Gene. Now there is Abigail. It is not at
all likely that the long-separated wife of former Minnesota Senator
Eugene McCarthy will ever gain the fame, or notoriety, of those other
American McCarthys. But in her own gentle way. Abigail McCarthy is
making a deserved and distinctive name for herself as the most
perceptive analyst of the precarious role of women in the
male-dominated world of U.S. politics. First in her well-crafted
autobiography. Private Faces/Public Places, now in her slim first novel,
Abigail...